Does Amazon have a counterfeiting problem?

It's easy enough to spot knock-off designer handbags when they're being sold from a stall but how can you be sure that your online purchases are legitimate? You cannot be, says Casey Hopkins, founder of Elevation Lab, the company behind The Anchor, an under-desk headphone mount. Hopkins claims that customers are unknowingly buying counterfeit versions of products on Amazon, adding that one seller of a counterfeit version of The Anchor is currently far outselling the legitimate product and taking away his business.

Hopkins goes further and says that Amazon is aware of a counterfeit problem and needs to bring in policies to prevent it. He says that while he “loves Amazon as a customer” he claims that “real sellers also have to police this themselves, Amazon isn’t active in going after them”.

The problem with this, he says, is that most people don’t click through to read up on the seller and check that they are reputable, they just see the product they want and think of it as being sold – rather than having its sale facilitated – by the Amazon platform.